You had to go very much sideways, more than you first thought, and sometimes that could be a bit scary

The first car purpose built for Group 4 regs, which required 500 (oh, all right then, 400…) to be built, although in 1972 this junior supercar convinced more as a spaceship than a world rally contender. But check the tiny wheelbase, built to help it chop direction on a dime. In fact, check the tininess altogether.

Wearing a Stratos is like putting on a Bell helmet – as Stig Blomqvist noted, climbing into one again at the Silverstone rally stage a few years back: ‘The car is like my clotheses,’ he said, ‘it’s got smaller.’
The men behind its development into a winner were Cesare Fiorio, Lancia’s tream manager, designers Gianpaolo Dallara and Marcello Gandini, Danielle Audetto and ace driver Sandro Munari. This Ferrari engined, Bertone-built jewel of a coupe so small it could barely contain two crew members, soon became the car other teams had to beat from the heat of Africa to the snows of Scandinavia.

Only 492 were built – some say it was less. But the Stratos captured the imagination like no other, especially after Bjorn Waldegard ran much of the ’75 RAC Rally with no rear bodywork. He was excluded for having no rear lights or numberplate, but rear body sections often mysteriously used to fall off after that – and it was interesting that there were usually another pair of lights mounted on the chassis.

Notoriously twitchy down to that ultra-short wheelbase, the Stratos demanded a special type of driver to get the best out of it. Markku Alen loved it. Munari is considered god today, but Bernard Darniche won more rallies in one. He carried on rallying the Stratos after the factory had stopped in 1978 and is the most successful Stratos driver of all time, with 33 victories to Munari’s 13, before the end of homologation 1982.

But it wasn’t good straight out of the box. In autumn 1972, Munari and Mario Mannucci started the Tour de Corse in the second Stratos built. It broke the rear suspension and did so again on the Costa del Sol rally a month later. But in April 1973, still before production started, Munari won the Firestone rally in Spain.

The car was finally homologated on October 1 1974. More successes followed, and Munari and the Stratos went on to dominate the Monte for the three years, ’75-’77, stopping off only to win the Tour de France in ‘74. It won the world championship for makes ‘74/75/76, the latter being it most successful year, winning in Sicily and the Giro d’Italia, Corsica, taking the top four in Portugal, but only fourth in the RAC.

As the world’s first purposely designed rally car, at the swansong of Group 4, it led directly to the development of the Group B monsters – Peugeot T16, RS200, Metro 6R4 and later the Lancia S4.
Cesare Fiorio said: ‘With the Stratos, we had made a tremendous car, frightening other manufacturers so that some dropped out.’

Today, Steve Perez runs a Stratos in historics and you’ll sometimes see one out on the Monte classic, but most rally cars are museum pieces, like the one here that lives at the Historic Motosport Museum at Daventry. It’s a genuine Group 4 car, and peering around the tiny cabin throws up odditities, from the curious slide-pivot side windows leaving room for helmet bins in the doors, heater controls straight out of a Flavia and the curious transverse handbrake, mounted Caterham-style over your knees.

The glassfibre front and rear flip front fit where they touch, it wears a truly terrifying pair of megaphones and it’s almost too wide to fit in the trailer. Nobody ever said a world-beater had to be practical.

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